Horus Lupercal - Part X

 

I see black.

I was going to post this another day, but...here he is. Spent some time on Horus' head after really wanting a bit more completion of the model before having a break. Seeing this empty suit of armour was just annoying, and so now there's more completed.

First note about the face is the eyes. I wanted them pure black, no whites, as subtle effect to show Horus turning sinister. From a distance it's not really noticeable, but closer up he takes on a different feel, which from a character perspective really suits what I was going for.

The whole face took about three hours. Very slow, very careful, on a highly detailed sculpt. I wanted to do it justice.

Someone gave him a couple of black eyes.

There wasn't really one particular method to follow, even if I will jot down the basic approach. A wet palette is essential when working on something like this, and it allows a lot of back & forth between colours, mixing paints together to get just the right tone, and fixing mistakes, and generally just working the model. A good brush helps too.

• First step was to paint White Scar onto the highlighted areas. This is mainly to help them show up later.
• For similar reasons, Nightlords Blue was painted into darker areas, and those that would receive some red light from the light source in the armour's collar.
• The eyes were painted with pure Abaddon Black. While I did have to fix this up on occasion, that's all that was done for the eyes.
  
• Ratskin Flesh mixed with Ionrach Skin was then glazed over the head. This step involved multiple glazes, adding a little more Ionrach Skin where I felt the Ratskin Flesh was too potent. The idea was for the skin to tend more towards the blue end of the spectrum, but a little red or brown tones are needed.
• Deepkin Flesh added to this mix to further highlight some areas - forehead ridges, nose, upper lip, cheeks, etc.
• Barak-Nar Burgundy mixed with previous steps and glazed underneath the cheeks, chin, nose, eyebrows, as the first step of lighting from underneath. A lot of glazing, mixing, moving colours about to get this right. Slight Nightlords Blue mixed in for a deeper purple that was applied to the lips as well.
  
• Wazdakka Red then mixed in or directly glazed to give the underneath light reflection a brighter tone, and shift it slightly more into red. Glazing is key. I could have pushed this step more, but didn't want the light to dominate the face and so left it as seen in the photos.

Very tiring on the eyes to paint, but well worth the results. I may give this model a break for a little bit before turning attention to the base and finalising everything.

-- silly painter.